1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to storage systems, and more specifically to improving performance in Storage Area Networks with low performance and high performance storage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Storage of data has always been important in business and computing systems. As more and more businesses are transacting business and activities via electronic medium and serving more of a global community, the need for more efficient data storage is increasing. Storage Area Networks (SANs) provide a solution for storing and retrieving mass amounts of data. FIG. 1 shows a system diagram of a typical SAN architecture. A SAN may consist of one or more host devices, 10–16, interconnected to one or more network devices, 18–20, through a first interface or network 28. Network devices 18–20 may be interconnected to one or more data storage devices 22–26 via a second network or interface 30. The first network/interface 28 and the second network/interface 30 may be the same network/interface. Commonly, in SAN architectures, interfaces 28 and 30 may use a Fibre Channel protocol. However, any networking or SCSI technology may be used to create a SAN. For example, an Ethernet network and/or an Internet protocol-based network may be used to provide interconnections between host computers, network devices or switches, and data storage devices. A host device 10–16, may access a data storage device 22–26 that is local or resides a short distance from the host device 10–16, or may access a data storage device 22–26 that is remote or physically resides over a long distance from the location of the host device 10–16.
The existence of Internet Small Computer System Interface protocol (iSCSI) or Fibre Channel over Internet Protocol (FCIP) has enabled Internet Protocol (IP) network based SAN implementations. However, IP network connections are problematic in that they generally give lower throughput than traditional Fibre Channel network links. This is especially more notable in IP connections over long distances to remote storage devices. Therefore, there is a need to provide increased performance when low performance storage or network connections are used.